When extreme events affect urban areas the response process should be fast and effective because the population and civil infrastructure densities potentially increase the impact of such events. These situations have shown the need to improve the group decisionmaking process and the coordination of relief activities carried out by relief organizations. This paper proposes to include first responders as decision makers and describes a technological platform to support decision making and coordination activities among these all actors involved. The supporting platform provides digital communication and information recording, representation and dissemination capabilities among the mobile workers participating in the relief efforts. The platform could also be used to support activities in scenarios similar to this one (e.g. police and military operations, massive social events). RÉSUMÉ. Quand des événements extrêmes se produisent dans des zones urbaines, les réponses des services de sécurité et des services d'urgence doivent être rapides et efficaces dans la mesure où la densité de population et d'équipement en augmente l'impact potentiel. Ces situations ont montré l'importance de la prise de décision collective et de la coordination des actions des services de réponse aux désastres. Considérant les personnels des services d'urgence comme des décideurs, nous proposons une architecture d'aide à la décision et à la coordination des activités. Notre plateforme fournit des outils de communication, de collecte des données, de représentation et de dissémination entre les acteurs participants à la réponse. D'autres applications de notre plateforme sont possibles, dans la police ou les armées.This paper presents a proposal to include first responders as decision makers and it describes a technological platform to record, represent and distribute contextual information during disaster relief efforts. The platform intends to improve the decision-making and coordination processes among first responders and the command post. The platform is composed of a software, hardware and communication system. It runs on mobile computing devices and it allows two information representations. Visual representations support the decision-making during disaster relief efforts, and the digital (internal) representation ensures the information's interoperability. The communication support enhances the communication and coordination capabilities of participant organizations. The

Abstract

The use of' IT solutions to support preparedness, response and recovelY process has been envisioned as a possible way to improve the support ./01' collaboration among the actors participating in mobile teams operating under constrained scenarios. Sof'fli'Ore applications supporting mobility have typical(v been conceived as .fzmctional extensions of' centralized entelprise systems hosted on corporate servers. However, in this work, wefocus on those mobile scenarios which go one step .fzll"ther in terms of' interoperabilitv requirements. This proposal aims to support the design, deployment and execution of' ad-hoc collaborative business processes (workflows) in mobile networks, operating under constrained conditions and taking advantage of'the Active Entity (AE) concept. 1 MOTIVATION Infonnation and communication technologies (lCT) allow workers to labor outside the office and accomplish their activities while they are on the move. That is, organizations are evolving towards environments where full mobility is a requirement. For instance, one of the most ignored, but urgent and vital challenges confronting society today is the vulnerability of urban areas to "eXtreme" Events (XEs) [7, 1,3]. These XEs include natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, as well as accidental and intentional disasters such as fires and terrorist attacks. One important lesson learned from recent disasters is the need to improve collaboration among organizations or actors involved in those disaster relief efforts [10, 2, 15]. Many pitfalls related to collaboration, such as lack of trust, infonnation sharing, communication and coordination, have been well documented [9, 12, 7, 13]. The use of IT solutions to support preparedness, response and recovery process has been envisioned as a possible way to improve the support for collaboration among the actors participating, for instance, in disaster relief efforts [8]. This work proposes to develop an IT-based platfonn that allows improving the coordination of involved parties. This paper presents an extension to the traditional workflow models in order to support dynamic settings. Specifically, the scenarios include mobile devices interacting among themselves using a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET). In this paper, we focus on those mobile scenarios which go one step further in tenns of interoperability requirements. This proposal aims to support the design, deployment and execution of ad-hoc collaborative business processes (workflows) in mobile networks, operating under constrained conditions and taking advantage of the Active Entity (AE) concept.

Advances in mobile computing and wireless communication are easing the evolution from traditional nomadic work to computer-mediated mobile collaborative work. Technology allows efficient and effective interaction among mobile users and also provides access to shared resources available to them. However, the features and capabilities of the communication infrastructure supporting these activities influence the type of coordination and collaboration employed by mobile collaborative applications in real work scenarios. Developers of these applications are typically unaware of the constraints the communication infrastructure imposes on mobile collaborative systems, because they are not easy to foresee. That leads to a high probability of communication problems in otherwise fully functional mobile collaborative support applications. This paper presents an experimental study with real devices and networks on a realistic physical environment that shows how ad hoc networks can effectively support mobile collaborative work and the practical limitations. The paper analyzes several networking issues and determines how they influence mobile collaborative work in various interaction scenarios. The paper also presents the lessons learned in the study and provides recommendations to deal with some networking issues related to real-world ad hoc networks.